


Eight Days a Week

by SpoonerizeSwiftness (SplickedyHat)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 1960s, Bullying, Gift Art, Gift Fic, Historical Fantasy, India, M/M, Naga, Other, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 09:56:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2503655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SplickedyHat/pseuds/SpoonerizeSwiftness
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The creature straightens up and settles in the sunlight, wrapping its long, glittering tail around itself in thick coils.  The scales run up to its waist, where you can see hints of human skin against the smooth hide.  It has a thin, cunning face, softened by a strangely mild smile that stretches its too-wide mouth, and its hair is in a wiry braid over its shoulder.  </p><p>“Nnn,” you say, and point with a hand that shakes so badly you’re barely pointing at the creature at all.  “—nuh.  Nah.  *Naga*—”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eight Days a Week

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fayghost](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fayghost/gifts).



> For Fayghost, AKA Momo, AKA actual tumblr user Gamzee, whose multi-faceted, flawed but deeply sympathetic (occasionally nonbinary) Gamzees give me great joy and whose illustrations are a blessing to this fic.

You don’t intend to find the clearing, but you’re not exactly looking where you’re going.  You’re running, it’s dim and cloudy and the forest (that you’re _not supposed to go in_ , dad said) is thick and dark and getting thicker and darker the further in you go.  The boys chasing you this time are yelling, getting closer, and maybe they’re right, everything they’re yelling—maybe you _are_ too fat for this, you’re blundering and breaking branches, but _ha,_ fuck them, there’s serious goddamn _muscle_ on your bones and that’s why half of the boys chasing you have a black eye or are wheezing and holding their guts where you landed a good solid kick.  Pretty sure you broke one guy’s nose.

You turn back to see if they’re catching you up, and of-fucking-course it’s right that second your foot catches on something.  You crash through the branches, still stumbling, scraping and bumping in what feels like one long, continuous fall.

And then you fall forward and hit the ground hard, stomach-first, all your air knocked out of you.

Your first instinct is to get up and keep running—but when you sit up and listen, breathing hard, you don’t hear any pursuit.    It’s like the assholes following you all fell off a cliff or something.  Everything is quiet and birdsong, and as you look up around the little clearing you’ve fallen into, even the light is different.  The clouds that had been closing in while you were at school aren’t there anymore—patchy golden sunlight is falling through the trees, glittering on a little river full of shiny brown stones.  The grass is perfect bright green and soft.  It’s almost unbelievable.

Literally.  You have to keep running your hands over the grass and glaring at the sunlight and the babbling stream, making sure it still looks like it did at first glance—to you disbelief and vague annoyance, it does. 

Next.  You look yourself over—your shirt is…strangely not dirty, even though you’d swear you hit the ground hard enough to smear mud on your elbows at least.  Your jacket is still at school.  Hair: messy as it ever is.  The rest of you: still round, strong as fuck, out of breath and pissed off.  And…

For a second you think you’ve lost it.  Then, as you start (with increasing panic) to root through your slightly crushed satchel, your fingers glance on something smooth and cold and worn.

You pull your dad’s flute— _pungi_ , right—out of the bag and look it over carefully.  More yours than his now, really, he’s only been showing you how to play it since you were a toddler, but it’s still your dad’s flute and if you put a crack in it you’re going to fucking kill yourself almost as hard as he will. 

Dad used to use it to charm snakes, he says, back when he was a boy and things were different.  But this is a different decade.  You’ve never even been close enough to a snake to try to play the damn thing the way it’s meant to be played, and honestly you haven’t got the slightest fucking intention to go hunting snakes down to learn.  But it’s still weirdly soothing, playing the thing.

There’s nobody around.  Dad won’t be any more pissed off if you come home two hours late than if you’d come home half an hour late, and besides, it’s…nice here.  Some of the constant, throbbing headache in your temples has died down a little, even, and when you resettle the _pungi_ in your hands you realize you’re not grinding your teeth like you always seem to be these days.

“...it’s not like I’m that good or anything,” you say to—who?  Nobody, you guess, the air, the sunlight, the strange, soft grass.  “So…yeah.  It’s not like anybody can fucking judge.”

You’ve gotten pretty good at picking out whatever tune comes into your head to play, and you start with one that’s been stuck in your head—weird, haunting thing you caught a snatch of on the radio the other day, it’s been stuck in your head ever since.  It’s hard to pin down—you start, stop, swear, start again, repeat until you’re playing all you can remember of the tune in a neat little loop, getting the tune out of your head and into the sunny air.

And then you open your eyes and almost swallow your flute in shock, because somebody is watching you through the trees.

It’s a child, by their height, but the face doesn’t look like a child’s face; it’s thin and sharp and strange and doesn’t quite look right.  You can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl, although you think there’s a glitter of red and gold that might be a sari, hanging low enough the shadows obscure their eyes.  The shadows stretch their smile oddly—your imagination stretches it more.  They’re just standing there in the trees, listening to you fuck around on your flute and _grinning_ at you!

It doesn’t matter if it’s a boy or a girl, either way you’re humiliated.

“Hey!” You start to get up—wince as the leg somebody kicked twinges and wobbles, but stand up as straight as you can, cross your arms and scowl.  “Get out here!  What the hell do you think you’re staring at, asshole?!”

Your watcher cocks their head to one side and comes a few more feet forward—black braid, and yeah that must be their _pallu_ draped over their head.  They’re still smiling, weirdly silent, and you remember the awful old horror movie Sollux convinced you to watch a few nights ago and then try not to think about the shaky black and white terror on the actors’ faces.  They just feel… _wrong,_ they move wrong, and you still can’t quite see their eyes in the shadows.

And then they slide forward into the light, and you make a noise like a whimper and sit down really fast and hard.

The creature straightens up and settles in the sunlight, wrapping its long, glittering tail around itself in thick coils.  The scales run up to its waist, where you can see hints of human skin against the smooth hide.  It has a thin, cunning face, softened by a strangely mild smile that stretches its too-wide mouth, and its hair is in a wiry braid over its shoulder. 

“ _Nnn,_ ” you say, and point with a hand that shakes so badly you’re barely pointing at the creature at all.  “—nuh.  Nah.  _Naga—_ ”

The creature cocks its head to one side like a considering snake, and moves forward another few feet in the grass and bows. 

“… _namaste,_ ” it says politely.

The voice is so normal, you blink and go still, confusion cutting the terror off dead.  The naga blinks back at you and smiles, showing sharp little white fangs. 

“I,” you try—your throat is really, really dry.  “—uh—I.  N-namaste.”

This seems to please it—its grin widens.  Shit.  Shit shit shit if you die here you’re never going to forgive yourself. 

“Did—” you swallow hard and try again.  “—is this…your place?  Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

It moves forward faster than your eyes can follow and you squeak like a startled baby and cover your face with your arms, fighting the urge to take a wild swing at it.  A few seconds later there’s no burning pain of fangs sinking into your flesh and no cold impact of that huge, powerful tail, and you dare to lower your arms again a little and crack open an eye.

The naga leans forward at you, head on one side, a few inches from your face.  Its eyes are bright and curious.

“Brother,” it says, and the light, sibilant voice is no more help than its pointed, sexless face.  It’s…still smiling.  “ _Brother._ ”

“Uh…”  Shit, how are you even supposed to address it?  “—I—s-sir—?”

Its nose wrinkles up a little.  _SHIT._

“Shit, sorry!  Uh—”

“Which one’s _sir_ again?”

You blink once.  Twice. 

“I.  What?”

“Sir.”

Shit.  Why are you even panicking, get a _hold_ of yourself Vantas.  It…doesn’t seem to be hostile.  Curious, yes, dangerous maybe but not right this second.  Get it together.  Just talk to it.

“I’m just not sure what to…call you.”  You straighten up a little, cautiously—the naga doesn’t strike, just settles down a little, so your heads are almost on a level.  “I’m—okay, fuck, don’t…don’t take this the wrong way but I can’t tell if you’re a—a boy or a girl.”

“Mm.”  It rolls its tail in a lazy wave through the soft grass and doesn’t offer an answer.  “Heavy words you got thrown around, brother.  Heavy meanings on their backs and all.”

“…so…” you wave your hands vaguely.  The naga watches you with that wide, placid smile on its face, not helping.  “—are you a girl?”

“Mm.” it thinks about that.  “…nah, not mostly.”

“So you’re a boy?”

Another few seconds’ thought.  “Nope.  Sometimes.”

“What—” goddammit this is a _stupid_ thing to get hung up on, you are literally talking to somebody who’s half-snake.  Come on, Vantas.  “Okay.  Fuck, fine, okay.  Well…well what’s your name?”

It—is it even okay to call…it…that?  Ugh, fuck—settles itself more comfortably down next to you—you flinch a little bit as that great, glittering tail comes to curl lazily around both of you, settling in the sunshine through the trees.  “Gamzee,” it says simply.

“Just ‘Gamzee’?”

It thinks about that for a few seconds, lazy-sharp eyes fixed off in the distance. 

“…Gamzee Makara,” it hazards after a few seconds, and rolls its cloth-draped shoulders a little, stretching arms that are just slightly too long.  Dusky scales glitter along its arms and shoulders, and for a second its face catches the light—what you thought was a sheen of sweat glints hard and glassy-smooth in the light and you realize it’s a layer of soft, almost invisible scales.

“And I know you,” Gamzee says, and smiles at you, that weird, wide, happy grin.  “Know the who and what of you.”  It flips its braid over its shoulder—the gold around its face and in its hair glitters.  “Karkat.”

“How do you—” you start, and then feel like an idiot.  Of course.  It’s not exactly human, who knows how it knows mysterious shit?  “…right, probably a naga thing, got it—”

“Nah brother.” It moves forward, props its chin up on its hand and grins at you, and you hold on really tight to your flute, look at it sidelong and don’t move. 

“Then—how—?”

“Well you do just come by and yell at yourself all the time and all.  _Karkat you stupid goddamn idiot_.” For a second, his voice sounds disturbingly like yours.  “Come closer than you know to me many a time, brother.”

“The people who were following me—”

“They won’t come here,” it says easily.  “Not if…not if you don’t go off all talking and spreading around.”  It looks at you, and you realize suddenly that it’s worried.  _Worried_ about what you’ll say.  Worried you’ll _tell_ someone!  God.

“I’m not going to—I mean—what the hell would I say?  What would _they—_ ” you feel a slightly hysterical laugh start to bubble up in your throat—you choke it down hard.  “—hey everybody I went out in the woods and a fucking _naga_ decided it liked my music—” You stop because Gamzee winces a little, and then think back over the sentence you just said and go scarlet.  “—shit.  _Shit,_ sorry, I just—don’t know what to—if you’re not a ‘he’ and you’re not a ‘she’—“

Gamzee blinks at you a few times.

“…well what about those folks you just asked on?”

You do a double-take and stop, frowning, confused.  “—what?”

“They,” it says.  “That ain’t he and sure not she, and don’t make either of us get all…” it trails off, staring absently off at nothing, and then seems to snap back to the moment.  “…right?”

It—they—they look at you anxiously, like they’re asking for _your_ approval.  You try the thought out.  They.  Them.  Theirs.  Your brain stumbles a little before settling hesitantly on ‘themself’, but it feels better than ‘it’ and honestly better than ‘he’ or ‘she’, with that plain, scale-smooth face staring at you with wide, concerned, slit-pupil eyes.  (There are marks on their face, almost a wide, foolish smile outlining their own too-wide, thin-lipped, fangy grin.)

“Okay,” you say.  “Okay, I guess…that works.”

“Lie down, brother,” they say, and curl up on the grass in the sun, resting their chin on their own tail.  Their back is an elegant, bony curve, their spine is a sleek curve of brown scales.  “Gettin’ my hospitality on at you.  Haven’t got much here but what I need, but you can have some of that.”

You come over, very slowly, and settle down. 

“Go on,” they say.  “What’s got you here on my ground?”

You talk for hours, _somehow,_ somehow it just _happens,_ you’re talking about your life and then about your mom and dad and then about things you’ve learned at school that are _entirely_ bullshit and the naga just hums and nods and makes little hissy noises, edging closer.  Occasionally, they’ll repeat something questioningly and you’ll end up explaining something at length while they make more encouraging sounds.  You end up leaning back on the bank, and it takes you a long time to realize that what your back is actually pressed against is the cool, muscular stretch of their tail.  You jump—but they don’t even seem to notice and it’s… _comfortable_ , it’s _really_ comfortable and the sun is warm and they’re so encouraging and don’t even seem to mind if you talk on and on like everybody else seems to.

And then you blink, and it’s starting to get dark out.

“…I should get home,” you say, and Gamzee makes a sad little noise as you start to push yourself up, making sure not to put your weight on their tail. 

“Aw,” they say.  “…okay, but…you’ll come back?”

“Yeah,” you say, and you find to your surprise you’re not actually lying as much as you think you are.

And then you duck out through the trees and run.

\--

The next time you get to the clearing, your eye is starting to swell up, your shirt is torn and your arm is scuffed and bleeding from being shoved hard at a wall.  Your knuckles are bloody, and dad is going to be so-goddamn _disappointed_ in you for fighting those idiots again, and this time it’s like the forest opens up for you.  You should be able to see the clearing through the trees, the gold light that’s streaming down from the sun should shine through the trunks, but you don’t see it until suddenly you’re stumbling forward and you land on that unreasonably soft grass.  Okay, so the place was real, that doesn’t mean—

“Karkat!”

You get up and Gamzee’s right there, bobbing up and down on their gleaming tail like a happy puppy, spinning around you in slithering circles, grinning their slightly-too-wide grin.  Well, so much for that theory.  You _definitely_ aren’t imagining them, not this.  You didn’t hallucinate anything after all. 

“Yeah—yeah yeah I’m back, fuck, stop going in circles like that, ugh.”  You get upright and blink, squinting into the sunlight.  Gamzee stops going in circles but can’t quite manage to hold still, swaying and beaming with all their white fangs.  “Wow you’d think I’ve been gone for years.”

“Sure as hell it did feel like it,” Gamzee agrees, with no trace of sarcasm, and grabs both your hands, pulling you further in like an eager child.  “Thought maybe I’d got you scared off and you weren’t…” their face falls for a second.  “…weren’t comin’ back.”

God. 

“…no,” you say, and they glance up at you and start to smile a little again.  “No I’m not going to just vanish and never come back.  I just _met_ you, you idiot.”

And then you catch your own mouth and flinch a little.  But Gamzee doesn’t seem to notice the insult; they beam and go slithering back to the spot you lay last time, curling up in the same patch of sunshine and glancing back up at you like they’re waiting.  You sigh, even though honestly there are much worse fates, even though for fuck’s sake, they’re the best listener you’ve ever talked to (at), and come over to lie down.

It should be uncomfortable when they wrap their tail around you and lean on you, but their cool, scaly torso is a comforting weight on your shoulders as they wrap themselves around your back and—oh, fuck that’s nice, so maybe you have kind of a weakness for people petting your hair. 

“Your skin’s all the strangest colors,” they say, and their fingers poke at the bruise—too hard, and you jump and yelp, pulling away.  They make a little hissing squawk and pull their hands back and for a second you just sit there, leaning in opposite directions and staring at each other.  Then they relax slowly, and this time when they touch the spot their fingers are feather-light.  Their fingertips don’t have any scales on them, but even there they feel strangely smooth and cool.  The touch is…really nice against the swollen skin.

“…hurt,” they say, really slowly, like they’re having to dredge the word up from somewhere deep down.  “—Karkat, brother, you’re hurt!”

“I never would have fucking guessed,” you say dryly, but they’re not listening.  Their eyes are wide and worried.  “Gamzee.”

“Does it hurt?” their fingers poke at you again—you wince and Gamzee looks mortified.  “ _Fuck_ ,” they say, and pull their hands away, fluttering uncertainly over your skin, almost touching and then pulling away again.   The word sounds ludicrous from them—you realize with a jolt that they probably got it from you, and you can’t stop yourself from letting out a snort of laughter.  Gamzee isn’t listening.  “Fuck.  Fuck fuck!”

“Settle down.”  You reach out before you can think about it too hard and pat Gamzee’s shoulder—their skin is strangely cool, smooth and dry-slick.  You wonder fleetingly if it would be stupid and rude to pet their tail and feel the scales there too, and then shake the thought off, cheeks burning.  “Gamzee, come on.  It’s just a black eye.”

“But—it’s hurting at you,” they say again, and their hand cups your cheek and turns your face up toward them and _wow_ their face is close to yours.  “I went and forgot how soft you were, you humans—here now—”

And then, before you can ask, Gamzee leans forward and kisses your bruised cheek.

The pain spikes so sharply you gasp, watering eyes squeezed tightly shut—then, slowly, it fades again.  You’re keenly aware, suddenly, of their cool lips against your cheek, a whisper of breath that brushes your skin and your eyelashes and makes you blink. 

“There,” says Gamzee, and sits back, smiling like they’re proud of themself.  “Sent some of that color out anyway.”

You reach up gingerly and poke at your cheek.  There’s a tiny twinge, but the pain is almost completely gone.

“Love, brother,” says Gamzee blithely in the distance, as you scramble forward and squint at the stream.  The surface is hopelessly rippled  in most places but there’s one spot near the bank where a rock created a little dam and the water pools out of the stream, and you can see your face.  Your eye is puffy, you think, but you can’t see any black or purple bruises.  It’s almost completely gone.  “Love does go on and do all this from a brother’s hands.  Ain’t that a miracle?”

You have no idea what they’re saying, but the bruise is almost gone and you turn back around and stare at Gamzee.  They stare back.  Holy shit, you were so worried about what you dad was going to think but maybe…

“Can you do that for these too?”  You hold up your battered arms.  The scratches aren’t bleeding anymore, but they itch and sting as you move, and the scabs crack.  Gamzee hisses and makes little inhuman clicking noises to themself as though the sight of the scratches distress them. 

“Lemme see,” they say, and take your arm, run their fingers over every single scratch one at a time and talk to themself, this little running commentary in a hissing whisper you can’t quite understand.  After a few minutes they nod, frowning with concentration, lift your arm reverentially, and press their lips gently to a nasty scrape on your wrist.  It burns, then fades.  Burns again, fades again as they work their way down your arm and the absurdity of the situation should be funny but instead you just watch them work, weirdly breathless, barely noticing their tail sliding up to wrap over your legs and behind your back, slipping under your hand so your palm is pressed to silky scales.

They pick up your hand and kiss your torn knuckles without prompting, and you can pretend that the hoarse little noise you make is just because of the flare of pain before they heal, not because you’ve always wanted somebody to kiss your hand and its goddamn romantic.

When they’re done (it feels like a goddamn eternity), you realize you’re leaned almost all the way back against the cool scales of their tail.  Gamzee’s eyes are shut, like they’re concentrating—when you shift, just a little, their eyes flick open and look up at you with a wicked little glint through their hair.  Deliberately, they kiss your hand again, on perfectly whole, unbroken skin.

“Um!” you say, and Gamzee lets go of you reluctantly—but doesn’t uncurl themself from around you.  “I—wow.  Fuck, I really…I owe you one.  Like there’s anything I could do for a—”

“ _Music._ ”

You stutter to a halt.  “—what?”

“Music!” Gamzee says again, eyes lit up, “—play me something, best beloved!  Come on, if you want to do paying back that’s how I’d want paying for sure.”

Your cheeks feel hot.  “Well,” you mumble, and reach out blindly for your backpack—the tip of Gamzees tail snags it, dragging it over to your hand.  “Well, I guess.  I mean.  Sure.”

\--

Three visits go past the same way—once in a while, Gamzee fixes you again, and every time you think for a few minutes of worried hiking that you’re not going to find him again.  But you always end up back in the clearing, where Gamzee sits with you and runs their long fingers through your hair.

The next time you come, though, you’re running again.

One of them almost gets in after you—the idiots chasing you, that is.  You feel a hand dragging at you as you run, tearing at the sleeve of your shirt; you yell, caught halfway through the trees, and then finally manage to jerk your arm free.

You’ve barely stumbled into the clearing when you’re staggering back again—something slammed you back hard and for a second there’s nothing but massive, snarling mouths and whipping tails and flared cobra hoods and an awful voice, layered over itself like an angry, unison scream, “— _YOU’RE NOT WELCOME_!”

And then, as you squeeze your eyes shut and huddle where you were thrown, the hissing goes quiet.

There’s a long moment of silence, and then sliding, silvery sounds, little hisses that turn into the soft sound of human breathing.  Then, hesitantly, a hand touches your shoulder.

“…uh,” says Gamzee’s voice.

“ _Don’t hurt me,_ ” you blurt out, and then feel like an absolute moron.  You’re still—still _shaking_ , goddammit, and it’s just them but you can’t open your eyes, you _can’t_.  Gamzee makes a distressed little rattling noise in the back of their throat. 

“Didn’t know it was you, brother.”  Their hand pets your shoulder awkwardly—their tail nudges up by your legs to support your wobbly knees.  “Sorry.  Sorry, _shhhh_ —”

The weird terror is still racing up and down your spine, but there’s scared, apologetic naga everywhere now and it’s hard to stay scared for too long—it’s almost enough to make you laugh, honestly.  You get your eyes open; Gamzee is bent down over you, that long, thin, androgynous face creased up and wide-eyed with worry.  When you look up at them and let out a long breath, relaxing, they relax too and ease close, still patting at every inch of you they can reach like you might panic and run if you’re not sufficiently comforted.

“I’m okay,” you say, and almost believe it.  “I’m.  I’m okay.  Did you just—what was that?”

Gamzee looks abashed.  “…seven-headed snake,” they say, like a little kid caught doing something against the rules.  Holy shit you forgot the pictures you found when you looked up nagas, the ones with seven snake heads and the ones with hoods like cobras and the ones like Gamzee when you first found them, a human body on a long, perfect snake tail.  What the fuck.  Seven-headed snake.  Sure.  “Got to thinking on things gone by, brother, I got myself mad thinking on it and then you were all yelling like somebody was hurting you and—”

“Couldn’t you have hung a sign on a tree or something,” you grumbles, and yeah, your legs work if you’re firm with them and don’t take ‘no’ for an answer.  You walk carefully to your spot by the stream and settle down in the sun, trailing Gamzee like an anxious, scaly shadow.  “Beware, angry motherfucking _naga_.”

They huddle down a little bit.  Fuck, well, now you feel bad.

“…well, it’s not like you actually hurt me,” you point out, and lie back in the sun on the streambank.  The sunlight glows through your eyelids when you close your eyes.  “Come on, let’s just—you didn’t fuck up anything permanent, let’s just hang out.”

They do that perplexed little blink.

“…lie around and talk,” you clarify, and their face clears.  They come sliding over and insinuate their way under and around you, nudge in close and then lay their head gently on your belly and close their eyes. 

“ _Wonderful soft_ ,” they say quietly to themself, and your face goes humiliated red but Gamzee just grins and wraps their long arms around you, snuggling up to your stomach like it’s their favorite goddamn pillow.  There’s really no getting away from Gamzee when they want to snuggle—you give up, lie back and try to relax.  After a few seconds, you move one hand absently, and then again, feeling the cool smoothness of Gamzee’s tail under your hands.  The surface is incredibly soothing under your fingertips, and you drop your head back and stroke the scales, feeling the slight shift of strong, strange muscles under your hands as Gamzee shifts into your touch and hums happily to themself in the sun.

You don’t remember falling asleep, but the next thing you know you wake up lying on the bank of the river in the last of the sunlight, and there’s a heavy snake tail wrapped four or five times around you, skinny arms around you, a heavy head on your belly and red and gold silk tickling your face. 

\--

You pet their hair and make an awful mess out of their braid and they laugh when they can rouse themself from the sleepy, happy stupor it puts them in.  You feel like a fucking god.

\--

You come staggering in and they kiss every inch of your arms and your face and once right on top of your head and you would swear the headache goes away.

\--

You come in one time, and ‘they’ makes them hum to themself, thinking.

“What?”

“Nah,” Gamzee says quietly.  “…’he’.  Yeah.  That’ll do now.”

“What?” you stare at him.  He shrugs his bony shoulders—glitters of gold thread flash in the light.  “Why did it change all of a sudden?  What the fuck?”

“Dunno brother,” he says easily.  “Just feel it right today.” He flops down on you, ignoring how that makes you huff out air, and lays his thin torso across your lap.  “…play us something?”

You do.  The only thing that comes to mind is one you’ve been practicing in secret, not exactly one of your dad’s traditional favorites—you play _Eight Days A Week_ and Gamzee sighs happily and nudges you eagerly every time you stop to figure out a messed up note. 

It’s halfway through the song you feel a stupid laugh bubble hysterically up in your chest, because there is a _naga,_ a real storybook creature draped across the slope around you, listening to you play The Beatles really badly on your dad’s old flute, grinning with their eyes shut like you’re playing them the most beautiful music in the world.  You pull the flute away from your lips and breathe, forcing the laugh back down.

Gamzee doesn’t seem to notice the music is gone for a second—then he makes an unhappy little noise and sits up, frowning mildly.

“…Karkat—”

“I know, I know, calm down.”  You pretend to be polishing the flute—your cheeks are warm from embarrassment and, you have to admit, a little bit of flattery.  Nobody has ever wanted to listen to you play for long before, but especially not…well, not something like Gamzee.  His sleepy, content adoration never gets old. “You know they’ve proved that snake-charming is about the movement of the flute, and it’s not really about—”

“ _Shhhh,_ ” Gamzee says dreamily.  Their—his—fucking hell that takes getting used to, why are you so slow at picking this up Vantas, come on—Gamzee’s tail pets your shoulder.  “… _you’re interrupting the miracles, brother._ ”

You sigh and go back to playing. 

It’s maybe five minutes later and you’re starting in on your best attempt at _Eleanor Rigby_ when Gamzee sighs a little and turns against you.

“… _you got hurt again,_ ” he points out, and nudges your shoulder with his tail.  The pain you’d forgotten about twinges again.  “It’s a thing I’m not okay about, you getting hurt by those—” he pauses, like he’s looking for a bad enough word.

“Motherfuckers?” you suggest sleepily. 

“…yeah, brother.”

You wave off the worry.  “I’ve got this shit.”

He makes an unhappy noise.  “I could—”

“No.”

He hisses petulantly.  “You ain’t even _listening._ ”

“If you go slithering down the main street of town like… _this_ —” you gesture at his tail, still draped over your lap and legs, “—you’ll tear up your scales on the pavement and probably get fucking _shot._   I’ve _got_ this, they’re just assholes.”

“Mother fuckers,” he says, and you feel absurdly proud of him for it.

“Yeah,” you say, and settle back down on him.  “…I should go home.”

“Stay a bit,” he says, and he doesn’t even have to convince you.

\--

You start to spend more and more time with Gamzee in their clearing after that.  Things are getting worse at school as you get closer to summer and the other boys get rowdier, wilder, more willing to egg each other on to new heights of stupidity, and in some cases stupidity that involves beating you up.  You do about as much damage to them as they do to you, but it’s spread out over groups of two, three, four, and it wears you down.  Your dad is worried but probably trying to let you have ‘space’.  You go to school, you go to Gamzee’s clearing and you don’t leave until the sun starts to go down.

“I’m getting a feeling of you,” they tell you one week, when you ask why they’re always there ready for you when you show up unannounced at their place.  “Feel you coming at me all wanting to be here, I would bet for riches that I could find you out even from far off, if I needed to come looking.”

The earnest look on their face, the thought of being able to have this weird, peaceful comfort in your house, in your school, the thought of them being somewhere _not here_ makes your stomach knot up with weird, fluttery warmth—you slap their scaly shoulder and they laugh like it’s a joke and don’t raise the subject again. 

\--

And then one day it goes wrong.

You forgot the idiots who have been making your life at school a living hell could actually _learn_ —you forgot, and they cut you off from the forest outside of town and herded you back into a dead-end road, an old alley abruptly cut off by the back of a newer apartment building.  Your escape is blocked off, and there’s three—four, _five_ of them, one of them a boy you don’t know the name of who you gave a black eye last time and one of them with a fading bruise on his cheek that you don’t actually think you put there.  Must fight people other than you, then.  You envy those sorry sons of bitches the opportunity to punch him in the face.

“Come on,” you say, and keep an eye on the mouth of the alley, because you’re brave and badass as hell but you’re not a moron and at the very least you have to get out of this stupid, tiny alley.  “Come on if you’re coming, you mentally deficient stone-skulled pieces of rotting _shit_ , give me your best shot!”

The first guy makes the mistake of trying to punch you in the guts and when you get him back just as hard he has no padding and he goes staggering off, wheezing, but there are two more of them coming—you make a split second decision; put your head down, ignore their flailing fists, and charge straight through them.  You get jerked up short for a second, spinning out and around as one of them tries to catch at your sweater, backing away from them toward the mouth of the alley with your fists up—

You hit somebody, staggering into them backwards, and they sway a little but they’re as immovable as a wall.  There’s somebody behind you and the rest of them in front of you and you are fucked you’re _so_ fucked—

“ _What’s this I see here_?”

You can’t turn around.  You see the boy’s faces—they know they’ve been caught, but there’s only one of him and six of them, right?  But he’s lean as a stick, barely looks strong enough to stand up straight, right? 

You wonder if they can see the scales glittering on his face, how he’d walk like a little too fast, stride a little too long on legs he isn’t used to having.  You wonder if they can see his fangs. 

“He started it,” one of them says, unprompted.  Behind you, you hear a low hiss.

“I find myself doubting on that,” says Gamzee blithely, and there’s a rattle to his voice.  “…he’s protected, my best friend here.”

“ _Protected_?” The one with the black eye laughs—he’s in a foul mood—he must have been one of the impacts you felt as you charged for the mouth of the alley, because now his lip is split as well, bleeding down his chin.  “By who?  _You_?”

“ _Yeah,_ ” says Gamzee, and their voice is all _different_ , things are shifting behind you, scales are rattling and rasping on stone and their voice is a multi-toned snarl. _“_ ME. _”  (and_ me, me, me, _ME_ , hiss fanged mouths around and behind you as a tail as smooth as silk and strong as steel cable wraps around you.)  The boy’s faces go ashen—you can see the horror dawning in their eyes and Gamzee laughs, warped and hissing, from all their fanged mouths.

“ _Do not lay your filthy hands on my brother again._ ”

“I’m sorry!” one of the boys gasps, and the others take it up too, backing away, bowing their heads in terror.  “— _sorry, I’m sorry, we’re sorry_ —“

“ _What say you, best beloved?”_ Gamzee’s voice is close by your ear—you feel the blunt, smooth nose of a cobra brush your skin, cool and smooth as pebbled, polished glass.  “ _What say you_?  _Do they_ go _?  I’ll take a taste of them for you._ ”

Your chest locks up.  The boys who tormented you are huddled on the ground in front of you, whimpering.  You could—you only have to say the word and Gamzee—

“…no.”

The hissing swells.  “ _They made you_ hurt.”  Gamzee’s voice hums in your bones.  “I’ll make them _stop._ ”

You take a deep breath and turn.

Gamzee towers over you, a slick column of golden-brown scales and flashing golden eyes.  Seven hissing cobra heads bare their fangs at the boys behind you, hoods patterned in unworldly-bright gold and scarlet.

“You can’t just kill people.”

Their tail lashes.  “ _I want to._ ”

“Gamzee—“

But they’re not listening.  For a second you stand there as they start past you, frozen, staring up at the unfamiliar, unearthly apparition of scales and fangs, and you think ( _you can’t be afraid, Karkat, don’t ever be afraid, it’s just a snake_ ) of something you heard once, when you were tiny and your dad used to tell you stories.  You reach into your bag with trembling hands—take a step back as Gamzee advances, then another—

It’s an old song, the first one your dad taught you, a simple little thing that reminds you of the way a snake moves with its simple, sliding melody.  You haven’t played it in forever—your fingers fumble a few notes, but you keep your eyes on Gamzee and don’t stop playing and they stare back, swaying heads, flared hoods, brilliant eyes.  Behind you somebody whimpers—two heads snap up and hiss, baring long, unbelievably sharp fangs wet with venom. 

You take a step forward and Gamzee’s eyes focus back on you, his scales are so close if you didn’t need both of your hands to play, you could reach out and touch him.  You can see the shift of his sides—you knew snakes breathed, but you’ve never been so close to one, never seen one large enough that you could see it.  Could you feel their heart beat through their scales?

You lower the flute and breathe for a second, trying to fill your lungs with air that feels like hot honey.  “… _Gamzee,_ ” you say hoarsely.  “You scared them enough.  It’s okay.” 

“ _Holy shit,_ ” somebody is whimpering behind you—you ignore them, and you can see red and gold scales on the snakes’ hoods.  You wonder, if you touch them, if they’ll turn into silk.  “ _Holy shit holy shit holyshitholyshitholyshit—_ ”

For a split second, your fingertips touch flexing, scaly hide, and then there’s a movement faster than sight and something prickles your wrist—

Gamzee freezes, and their fangs prick your skin, a hair’s breadth from going right through your arm.  You stop, not breathing, not moving, just fixing your eyes on the head about to bite you, silently praying.

And then you see something you’ll never be able to properly explain.  Flesh and scales melting together, shrinking, twisting, and the glittering golden-red hood shifts and flows like water and settles into a silk sari—now two thin arms, a narrow torso.  As soon as Gamzee’s back to a human shape, they fall over.  You catch them, and barely even notice when the boys go sprinting past you.

“Are you okay?” You can still feel the scales on their skin—when you stare at the ground, trying to stay calm, you notice they have bare feet, that those are scaled too.  “—let’s—let’s, I, come on, let’s go home.”

\--

You don’t realize until you’re ducking under the trees and Gamzee changes again, a long, elegant flow of scales where their legs used to be, that you called their clearing “home”.  You’ve been going there more than a year, but you still feel stupid and embarrassed.  But they didn’t even notice, so you don’t apologize, just keep your face straight and climb awkwardly through the underbrush, threading your ways through the trees.

Gamzee leads you back through the woods, and you don’t trip over anything when you follow the silky brown ribbon of their tail and through into the warmth.  All your aches and pains seem to soften when you’re in the sunlight here and it’s a relief, you’re not gonna lie—it’s not that you can’t _deal_ with pain, you’re tough, tough as hell!  But that doesn’t mean, y’know.  You can’t like having it gone.  You start to slump down in the sunlight on the bank where you always sit, but Gamzee turns back and grabs your hand in one of theirs. 

“Here,” they say, and lead you over into the middle of the sun.  When they’re sure you’re standing in the right place, backing away a couple times and then diving back in to move you around a little, they straighten up and hook a few fingers in the already-disheveled cloth of their sari, pulling it down off their head and tugging the neck of it further down.  For a second even in the afterglow of your victory your mind goes awful, creepy places, but Gamzee doesn’t seem to have any intention of undressing any further. 

“What—”

A long finger presses over your lips.

“ _Ssshh._ ”

Gamzee reaches down to the place the soft, broad scales spread off their shoulders and down to their chest, and scrape their nails gently over the scales just under one collarbone.  They wince—there’s a soft sound and a scale the size of your palm comes free, leaving a bare, tender-looking patch of skin underneath.  You start to make a worried, angry noise, but Gamzee shakes their head, staring down at the scale in their palm.  Then they raise it up, take a piece of the red and gold silk wrapped around them, and wrap the scale up carefully, clasping it in both hands.

For a few seconds, you’re both silent.  The wind rustles the trees and warms your skin.  Gamzee’s tail wraps around both of you in a great loop, and for a second you feel like you’re looking up at a statue of an old god, like they’re not even real. 

And then they move again, look up and smile, and the moment is over.  They unwrap the scale from their pallu—the silk seems to cling, and the scale gleams, strangely-shaped and…different somehow…

Gamzee holds it out and drops it in your hands, and you stare at what used to be a scale, turning it over in your fingers.  Where there used to be smooth, golden-brown oval, now there’s a tiny, golden snake, seven-headed, knotted into an elegant circle on a thin cord—you can’t tell what the string is made from, but as you raise the necklace up in front of your face its fourteen tiny eyes gleam with miniscule purple gems.  Gamzee smiles like they’re nervous, and the little snake turns in front of your eyes.

“Won’t ever break,” they say, hurried, like they have to convince you before you can throw it away.  “Won’t ever get lost, nobody won’t ever see it, and it’s all the best luck I got in me—”

“Holy shit,” you say, very softly.

“—need for money, or, or any harm on you, and folks who try, they’ll come to trouble instead and they won’t try again, so—“

“Gamzee,” you say, and it comes out all tiny and breathless.  “Gamzee, holy shit, I can’t take this—” They slump.  “—it’s _too fucking generous_ ,” you say, and you’re the one babbling now, trying to explain.  “—it’s—I can’t take this, it’s too—I’m too— _wow._ ”

They smile tentatively, and your eyes are watering and awful.  “Stop it,” you mutter, and kick weakly at their skinny, scaly shins.  “Stop smiling at me.  You’re gross.”

“You like it?”

“You dumb fucker.”

Their smile widens.  “You like it!”

You don’t bother to answer, just open the loop of cord carefully and lower it over your head.  You would swear the cord was too long, but when you settle it it’s the perfect length, it rests right over your breastbone.  Just long enough you can lift it up and look at it whenever you want, hide it easily under your shirt.  The warmth of the sunlight seems to ease its way under your skin as you tuck it away, and it heats you up where it’s pressed to your chest under your shirt, like their body-heat is still in the scale. 

“…thank you,” you say, the words awkward and unpracticed in your mouth.  “Fuck.  Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me till it get your home safe, brother,” they say, and grin, straighten their sari so it covers the bare patch of skin where the scale used to be.  “…not the best at this as ever was.”

“Shut up, it’ll work fine.”  You still can’t breathe, and there’s something you need to do, you’re pushed a step forward—another.  “Shut up, just—shut up.  Come here.”

They lean down for you, and you take their shoulders, lean up, and kiss them on the forehead.  They blink at you from inches away, confused and pleased. 

“I’ll come back,” you say.  “And now I bet nothing’s ever going to fucking stop me.”

They smile and press in closer, cheek to cheek, wrapping their arms around your shoulders, their tail around your legs.

“ _I know._ ”

“I swear to god if I have to keep you from killing somebody ever again we’re going to have _words._ ”

They sigh.  “…I know.”

“I fucking love you, you absolute piece of scaly shit.”

They smile, and squeeze you tighter.  “… _I know._ ”

\--

Your dad is sitting at the table, surrounded by papers, when you get home—your mom is leaning over his shoulder, holding one of his papers up and squinting at his awful, excited handwriting.  “Welcome home,” he says, and smiles at you.  “…did you do anything good today?”

You roll your eyes at him, but maybe he sees you smiling because he smiles too and doesn’t call you back when you start up toward your room.

“ _…yeah_ ,” you say when you’re finally alone again, back in your room, and you settle down on the bed, turning your flute over and over in your hands.  It still feels strangely warm.  Under your shirt, the little golden snake seems to glow as warm against your skin as the sunlight in Gamzee’s clearing, and somehow you can’t help but smile. “…yeah, I think I did.”


End file.
